I’ll tell you what scares me: I don’t think we know how to prevent a tragedy like the Newtown massacre. The more information that emerges on the killings, the less effective any of the potential policy remedies appear to be.

…and listing some of the most common rhetorical arguments, pros and cons, Klein then promptly brings up the thought of seeing if there’s a way to restrict handgun purchases… despite the fact that nobody at Newtown was murdered with one. In fact, he’s pretty explicit in trying to come up with a way to generalize a response to the aforementioned atrocity. And they wonder why pro-2nd Amendment folks don’t trust anti-gun Democrats…

Moe Lane

PS: We will have no consensus on what to do about awful events like Newtown until we come to a consensus on what constitutes ‘sick,’ ‘crazy,’ and ‘evil.’ Sorry to say that, but that’s how I see it.

Ezra Klein is sort of the journalistic equivalent of a Kardashian. Not that he’s generally useless like the Kardashians, but because he’s basically considered “smart”” due to the same circular logic by which the Kardashians are “famous”. The Kardashians are famous because they have 50 reality shows, and they have 50 reality shows because they’re famous, but there isn’t any explanation for either beyond that. Substituting “Klein”, “smart” and “Washington Post column” in the appropriate spots nets the same effect.

I think it’s because he came of age during, and rather looks like a cast member of The West Wing, a “biting” political drama that featured all manner of intelligent-sounding “reasonable” leftists, ergo, he must be a “reasonable” and “intelligent”, if sometimes “biting”, leftist.

The more information that emerges on the killings, the less effective any of the potential policy remedies appear to be.
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Yet that won’t stop people like him from trying because THIS time it will be different.

Wrong. They believe in Present Evil. It’s just that they believe in its inverse as well (despite all evidence to the contrary), the Perfectibility of Man. If only those Rightwingers and their hideous, depraved, downer view of Man as “fallen” would just get out of the way…!
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See, e.g., “Conflict of Visions”, (Sowell, Thomas)

Klein accidentally uncovers the fatal flaw in his worldview. Policy problems require policy remedies, but in very, very few instances are things merely policy problems. This holds true most especially in this case.

When all is said and done, policy remedies always seem to violate the Hippocratic Oath.